Down with coal!The climate fight hasn't been going well lately. The Copenhagen conference in Dec. 2009 seemed to mark the effective end of international efforts to control carbon. The U.S. Senate couldn't even bring itself to vote on cap-and-trade last summer. In November, a GOP committed to climate denial won new strength in the Congress. Right now, the House is busy trying to strip the EPA of the right to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Oh, and 2010 was the warmest year on record. But there is one fight that's gone very much the right way, and it holds lessons for …

Now they've got another reason to cheer.Photo: 350.org We rejoice with our brothers and sisters in Egypt at the news that Hosni Mubarak has resigned. Egypt has been a big part of the 350 movement from the very first video we ever did, which showed the 350 pennant floating from the pyramids. But we rejoice even more at the example they set for the rest of the world, and implicitly for those of us engaged in the climate fight. A real people's movement -- a massive, broad-based, honest movement that doesn't focus on elites, but instead on the whole population …

A hard snow's a-gonna fall.Photo: 350.orgIf you were in the space shuttle looking down yesterday, you would have seen a pair of truly awesome, even fearful, sights. Much of North America was obscured by a 2,000-mile storm dumping vast quantities of snow from Texas to Maine -- between the wind and snow, forecasters described it as "probably the worst snowstorm ever to affect" Chicago, and said waves as high as 25 feet were rocking buoys on Lake Michigan. Meanwhile, along the shore of Queensland in Australia, the vast cyclone Yasi was sweeping ashore; though the storm hit at low tide, …

Chemistry and physics don't give us much time, and they don't haggle.This essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom's kind permission. The U.N.'s big climate conference ended Saturday in Cancún, with claims of modest victory. "The U.N. climate talks are off the life-support machine," said Tim Gore of Oxfam. "Not as rancorous as last year's train wreck in Copenhagen," wrote the Guardian. Patricia Espinosa, the Mexican foreign minister who brokered the final compromise, described it as "the best we could achieve at this point in a long process." The conference did indeed make progress on …

Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the biggest art project the planet has ever seen -- so big that in some places we needed to back up into outer space for enough perspective. These pictures are the product of tens of thousands of people, some of whom have been working hard for six months, and they’re the product of a kind of faith. No one knew what they would look like because no one had ever done anything quite like them before. But everyone who’s seen them this past week has gasped -- they’ve sensed, perhaps, the fundamental truth of the …

Let's imagine an alien or two, monitoring a roster of planets from some distant galaxy. "Hang on, Xloopi," one might say. "That third rock out -- if the instruments are working, their atmosphere is on the fritz. CO2 is climbing 2 parts per million a year. What do you think is going on?" "Two possibilities, Kkar. Either they've gotten careless with their fossil fuels, or they're going in for mosquito-ranching in a very big way." If anyone actually is watching from afar, what they're seeing isn't pretty. Scientists have tried to warn us that the Earth is warming, but so far …

In Barbados last year, over 350 volunteers planted 350 trees in 350 seconds.Photo: 350.orgWe lied. I've been telling reporters for days that "we've organized more than 7,000 events" for 350.org's huge Global Work Party on Sunday, a figure that represents by far the most widespread day of civic engagement on any issue at any time in the planet's history. (We're still missing Equatorial Guinea and North Korea on our roster of countries, in case you have any leads.) The 7,000 figure isn't a fib -- in fact, it's deeply conservative, since lots of people are holding events they haven't managed …

Bill McKibben and crew smiled as they set off on their road trip to convince the White House to put solar panels back on the roof. Three weeks later, the White House announced they were reintroducing solar panels.Photo: 350.org via FlickrLooking back a few weeks, we were bitterly disappointed when the White House failed to act on our request that they put solar panels back on the roof. But in truth, I'm almost happy that they waited. Today's announcement that the Obamas will be taking their showers and cooking their breakfast courtesy of the sun could not have come at …

I just climbed off an airplane at Boston's Logan Airport. The day began in Monterrey, Mexico -- and though I was tired, I was also feeling pretty good. Our big day of action on Oct. 10 has been building to a crescendo: Yesterday we broke our record from last year, registering more than 5,500 actions for the big Global Work Party. But I'd barely turned on my computer when that good feeling turned to a kind of nausea. There were emails from people all saying the same thing: Have you seen this? "This" was a gross video making its way …

This essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom's kind permission. Bill McKibben and crew smiled as they set off on their road trip to convince the White House to put solar panels back on the roof. There were no smiles after the White House meeting.Photo courtesy 350.org via FlickrI got to see the now-famous enthusiasm gap up close and personal last week, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. The backstory: I help run a global warming campaign called 350.org. In mid-summer, we decided to organize an effort to ask world leaders to put solar panels …